CFP Postcapitalist Futurologies

**2nd Call for Papers for Nordic Geographers Meeting June 18th–21st 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden**
 
Postcapitalist Futurologies
 
Conveners: Aron Sandell (University of Oslo, Norway) & Tuomo Alhojärvi (University of Oulu, Finland) 
 
The eight years that have passed since the meltdown of financial capitalism have been characterized not only by the proliferation of austerity measures but also by the popularization of postcapitalist imaginaries. Ideas around an approaching end of capitalism circulate widely today and have been propagated in particular through a genre of writing that we might call postcapitalist futurology. Some of the main contributions to this genre, including Mason’s Postcapitalism (2015), Srnicek & Williams’s Inventing the Future (2015) and Hardt & Negri’s Commonwealth (2009), all propose similar narratives of capitalist crisis and postcapitalist potentiality based on the tendential developments of machinic automation and digital networks of socialized information. The path to postcapitalism, the story goes, runs through and beyond the most advanced landscapes of techno-capitalist development.
 
In this workshop, we wish to delve into such contemporary postcapitalist futurologies and the spatio-temporalities they inhabit and perform. We want to question the affirmation of capitalist logics of techno-social change -- and, indeed, the totalized presence of “the capitalist system” in the first place -- as a prerequisite for envisioning capitalism’s eventual demise. How might we think postcapitalism otherwise and elsewhere? Following authors such as Gibson-Graham (2006a, 2006b) and Harney & Moten (2013), we call for a decidedly open study of postcapitalism, welcoming a broad range of contributions that include interrogations of past and current theorizations of postcapitalism(s); discussions of existing and proposed postcapitalist practices; as well as artistic, performative, and fictional engagements with postcapitalisms we already have, and postcapitalisms yet to come. The workshop format will be based around short interventions (e.g. paper presentations, collaborative exercises, artistic performances) followed by ample time for collective thinking and discussion. 
 
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to Aron Sandell ([email protected]) and Tuomo Alhojärvi ([email protected]) by 15 December 2016. Also, feel free to ask any questions about the proposed session. For more information about the conference, please check the website: http://www.humangeo.su.se/english/ngm-2017
 
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006a. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It). A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. University of Minnesota Press.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006b. A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota Press.
Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Harvard University Press.
Harney, Stefano & Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Autonomedia.
Mason, Paul. 2013. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. Allen Lane.
Srnicek, Nick & Alex Williams. 2015. Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Verso.